Korea, South

In April 2023, the United States and South Korea marked the 70th anniversary of an alliance that has served the strategic interests of both countries. Their relationship has expanded beyond…

Building on last year’s “Rethinking Korea initiative,” in 2024 KEI will continue to explore the evolution of US-Korea relations, Korea’s place in the world, rapid changes in Korean society, and…

Despite being industrial powerhouses, Korea and Japan are both resource-poor nations with limited domestic sources of energy. Powering their economies required both to develop supply chains for fossil fuels, nuclear…

KEI is pleased to hold a program on Economic Security and U.S.-China Competition: The View From North Korea. One country is conspicuously missing from existing discussions about the dilemmas and…

In celebrating seventy years of their security alliance, the United States and Korea exemplify the very best of what a robust economic partnership looks like. With terms like “friend-shoring” and “economic allies” increasingly making their way into beltway policy language, no reflection of the past seventy years of the U.S.-Korea alliance would be complete without…

There are a plethora of studies on South Korea as a middle power. Some argue Korea needs to change to fit the term, some reinvent the term to fit Korea, and still others just use the term without questioning. Very few ask why we bother at all. The modern term “middle power” is an historically…

With the final rule regarding the CHIPS Act guardrails released on September 22, Korean chipmakers’ ability to receive U.S. subsidies while maintaining operations in China appears to be on firmer footing.  Korean chipmakers had been caught in a form of limbo ever since the U.S. Department of Commerce released the proposed guardrails in March 2023,…

Korea has faced persistent labor shortages since the late 1980s, centered on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which tend to pay low wages for low-skilled, non-regular jobs. SMEs have faced increasing difficulty in replacing retiring workers with young people, given the large education gap between generations. In 2021, 69% of the population aged 25 to…

Please join KEI and KIEP for a discussion about the first 10 years of KORUS and the future of the U.S.-Korea economic relationship.